Biased and unprofessional reports on German books, translation issues and life in Berlin

Tuesday, 1 November 2011

Readings Online

The lovely people at the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin have a lovely new project. As you may know, the Germans do like a good reading. Aside from being more plentiful, the readings in the German-speaking world are often much, much longer than anywhere else. Which calls for a great deal of patience and comfortable seating. But of course you can't always make it to every reading that might interest you, or you might be there but possibly sort of drift off and start admiring the architecture or playing that "who would I procreate with if the end of the world were nigh" game in your head and so rather miss out on some of the content.

Or maybe you don't happen to live in Berlin (shame on you!). Or your time machine is out of order. What you need is lesungen.net. 134 readings (so far) dating back to 1990. Featuring big names and award-winners, obscure poets, wordy moderators, bearded publishers, and all manner of people in between. How about this rather interesting one for a start: Günter Grass reading and talking to the now Büchner Prize recipient FC Delius back in 1992 about The Call of The Toad, among other things.

Oh, and if you only have a small amount of time, I find zehnseiten.de rather good for short, plain readings by German writers.